1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a drying apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus for drying photographic films after development process by uniformly applying compressed air on the surface of the film.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It has been known in the art to dry the surface of a film after development process by applying compressed air on the surface thereof. Most of the conventional apparatus for drying the surface of the film employs a heat source such as an electric heater between a compressed air supply source and the surface of the film to be dried so that the film may be dried by an air blow of high temperature. Further, in this type of conventional apparatus, the film processed through a development station is squeezed through squeeze rollers before fed into the drying apparatus. The drying apparatus uses a drying chamber into which the compressed air of high temperature is supplied and the squeezed film is transferred. This kind of drying apparatus is widely employed in the general automatic film processer. The above described drying apparatus suffers from the defect that a squeeze rollers must be provided between the drying station and the development station. Further, the above described drying apparatus needs a large drying chamber, and accordingly, the apparatus occupies a large space. In addition, since a large amount of compressed air of high temperature is used, the drying efficiency is low. Further, the drying speed is not sufficiently high.
It has also been known in the art to dry a film mounted on an aperture card in a system wherein the film is exposed to imagewise light to form a latent image, developed, and dried while the film is mounted on the aperture card. This kind of system is disclosed, for instance, in Japanese Patent Publication No. 45-30300/1970. In this system, the film is subjected to an air blow of high temperature normally directed to the surface of the film from an air nozzle after subject subjected to a compressed air blow. This drying apparatus is advantageous over the aforesaid conventional drying apparatus in that a squeezing means is not necessitated and the size of the apparatus can be made compact since the development process and the drying process can be conducted at the same place. The drying apparatus described just hereinabove, however, is disadvantageous in that two kinds of air blow should be provided and the structure of the drying apparatus is complicated thereby. Further, in this apparatus the surface of the film is liable to be unevenly dried, which results in uneven density in the image of the film developed, since the film is subjected to an air blow normally directed to the film and radially spreading on the film. The uneven density in the image of the film markedly degrades the quality of the image.